E.M. Epps's Blog, page 7

"Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie

Thumbs up for Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Science fiction.

I'm not sure I liked this book—for my taste, too much politics and not enough emotion (though for understandable reasons: the main character is not human). But that did not stop me from staying up until 3:00am with my fingers glued to the pages because I had to know what happened. Ancillary Justice might not be a cheerful read, but it is a work of genius that deserves every one of its awards. Usually I try to synopsize the plot of the book I'm reviewing, just a bit, but because this beautifully-structured book unfolds like origami—you won't know what is really going on for most of the book—nearly anything is a spoiler except what is on the back cover. Justice of Toren used to be a spaceship; now she has only a single human body, Breq, and she has a crazy plan of vengeance. Who she wants to punish, and why, are things you'll only discover through time. Because of that, it gets off to a slow start; stick with it. Ancillary Justice is pretty much a necessity for hard science fiction readers who like a good idea bravely told, or for crazy writer-people like myself who giggle giddily with admiration as we watch plot threads intertwine like android ballet.

Ancillary units that only ever woke for annexations often wore nothing but a force shield generated by an implant in each body, rank on rank of featureless soldiers that might have been poured from mercury. But I was always out of the holds, and I wore the same uniform human soldiers did, now the fighting was done. My bodies sweated under my uniform jackets, and, bored, I opened three of my mouths, all in close proximity to each other on the temple plaza, and sang with those three voices, "My heart is a fish, hiding in the water-grass...." One person walking by looked at me, startled, but everyone else ignored me—they were used to me by now.

"The Western Lit Survival Kit" by Sandra Newman

Thumbs up for The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner by Sandra Newman. Literary criticism.

I adore this book. If you are considering getting an English Lit degree, why not just memorize this instead? You'll save time, you'll laugh more, and you'll still be able to chat knowingly about Restoration Drama when it comes up (as it does). Oh, did I mention you'll laugh? You will. A lot. I sometimes strongly disagree with Newman—and you probably will too—but (as should be clear from my blog) I prefer literary criticism with personality rather than some ridiculous pretense of objectivity. I really can't recommend this book highly enough, to those who are interested in this sort of thing.

The other Jamesian keynote is the convoluted sentence. These sentences are a sort of literary Great Wall: while other, similar, structures exist, none are quite so long with so little apparent reason. (In fact, some sentences in The Golden Bowl can be seen from space.) Multiple feelings and perceptions are layered in each of them, in a syntax that seems to flow in every direction but forward. To give you an idea, here's one from The Ambassadors: "Nothing could have been odder than Strether's sense of himself as at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then." You will never catch Henry James writing "The dog barked." It will always be: "Had the dog not been, from the moment at which she entered the room in the perplexed flush of expectation in which she had been left by the hints of Mr. Westcott, barking..."

"Data, A Love Story" by Amy Webb

Thumbs up for Data, A Love Story: How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to Meet My Match by Amy Webb. Science.

After watching Webb's TED talk I was curious as to whether her book was a worthwhile expansion of the talk, or merely a padded version. I can say now that the book is well worth it, if you think humor, data hacking and love are a winning combination. I do. The premise: Amy Webb's love life sucks. Her family keeps setting her up with ridiculous men; the next step is online dating. The dates are so bad that she creates a spreadsheet to track data points such as "high fives," "number of misused vocabulary words," and "times he checked his mobile." That's when she starts designing algorithms to find the perfect man, starting with a 72-point list of necessary characteristics...and the game is on.

I clicked on another featured profile, Tammy4337. Pretty, thin, blond. Surprise, surprise, surprise. She was also vague in her profile, listing "Design" as her career. What do you design, websites? Tractors? Tell me something about your real skills and interests! At least my Yozora profile was descriptive and thorough. The men who looked at me knew exactly what I did for living, and to be perfectly honest, what I did was pretty cool. I used to jet in and out of countries on reporting assignments. I'd shared a snack of deep-fried silkworms with a toothless Korean woman on the side of a mountain! I'd embedded with the Japan Self-Defense Forces and taken part in a forty-eight hour combat training session!

"The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt

Neither thumbs up nor thumbs down for The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Children's.

Amusing enough if you don't mind bitchy art supplies, but, as far as I'm concerned, the author missed a perfectly good opportunity to introduce tykes to the concept of collective bargaining.

"Undercity" by Catherine Asaro

Thumbs up for Undercity by Catherine Asaro. Science fiction.

Ah, the Skolian Empire! Where the women are all kick-ass, the men all gorgeous, the architecture stunning, the sexual tension thick, the politics complex, the psions fascinating, the enemies deliciously evil, the technology actually useful.... It's impossible to convey how fun Catherine Asaro's books are, on every level—world-building, character, dialogue, plot, action, romance, technology. I'm quite a bit behind on the series, but when I had the chance to get this review copy of the first book featuring a new character, I pounced. Then I gulped it down with a giant gleeful grin on my face. Undercity follows a female (and kick-ass, natch!) ex-military P.I. tasked to recover the runaway-or-kidnapped cloistered son of a aristocratic family. It's not deeply intertwined with all of the complex politics and family relations of the rest of the series, so, if you're unfamiliar with the universe, it's a great place to start. And if you're not already reading Asaro—you should definitely start.

I set the gun on the ground. "You have guts." What an incredible understatement. He had just bluffed one of the most brutal criminals on the entire planet with a water pistol.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted section HAS NOT been checked against the final print edition because the final print edition is not yet available.

"You Made My Heart a Hunter" novella - FREE April 5th-7th!

I am overjoyed to announce that I have another novella available on Amazon!



You Made My Heart a Hunter is an unusual work for me in that it's not written for humor, but has a more spiritual and anthropological bent. Without spoiling anything, I'll say it's about magic, and nature, and faith, and society and the individual, and friendship, and change - in other words, all of the good things that most stories are about. But most of all it's about an old friend of mine, a somewhat difficult sorceress by the name of Lhennuen, and how she came to be who she is....

You Made My Heart a Hunter

She has the power to change the course of a river with a few lines of song, but she couldn't save her own husband from his fate. Lhennuen Damaiud, sorceress and priestess, leaves her temple for the northern forest in order to escape from humanity and figure out her life's purpose.

Yet as it turns out, escaping from humanity is harder than she expected. And escaping the designs of God...well, she should have known that was impossible.

Of all the things I've ever written, I'm the most excited to get YMMHAH out to readers because it's my first published work to take place in the universe I've been writing stories in since I was fourteen; and it's also the prequel to the novel I'm currently working on, which should be finished this year.

Because I can't wait to hear what people think, I'm doing a promotion. On this April 5th-7th (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) "You Made My Heart a Hunter" will be FREE to download. Yes, free! You can read it on your computer or on any smartphone or tablet that can run the Kindle app - which is, as far as I know, all of them. There's also an option to give copies as gifts, so while it's free why not take advantage of that, and share with any of your friends who like to read!

My hope is that you'll check it out and then leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviews are very very important for authors; you as a reader have way more power than you think! And even if you don't like it, I want your honest opinion - how else am I supposed to grow as a writer without feedback?

It has one great review so far from Ann Hunter (who writes pretty fabulous fairytale retellings herself; Moonlight is my favorite). She compared it to the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley (best known for The Mists of Avalon) which is, well, absolutely the nicest compliment I've ever gotten.

As a fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley's work, I felt like I was reading Priestess of Avalon or Forest House again and was in love.
--Ann Hunter

(And for what it's worth, though I do know Ann and asked for her private feedback, I didn't solicit a review. What a wonderful surprise!)

Download from Amazon and then let me know what you think on Facebook!

When in doubt as to what God's asking, she thought, say "yes." It might go horribly wrong, but at least you'll have gotten into trouble honestly.
--You Made My Heart a Hunter

Author blog hop

Oddly, I don't know very many other writers, but I was honored to recently become friends with the fabulous YA author Ann Hunter (though I know her under her real name, which I shall never ever reveal, unless you give me a gluten-free cookie).

Anyway. Ann recently participated in a author blog chain hop and tagged me as one of the next in line. Whereupon you, dear reader, most likely went Huh? What's an author blog chain hop? I think my grandma used to dance to that back in the 40's....

Well, she had to explain it to me too. Apparently an author blog chain hop is a sophisticated, particularly nerdy kind of chain letter. The idea is to answer a few questions about your writing and then tag some other authors, who will do the same and tag more authors, and on and on until we either run out of authors or until the destitute Nigerian princes get involved and ruin it for all of us. In the meantime, it's good writerly fun.

Without further ado, here are my A's to the Q's.


What am I working on?
This has two answers. One of them, perhaps most accurately, is "nothing." I write cyclically: I'll write like a crazy person (and I mean craaaazy) for a week or a month, and then I'll abruptly stop, for a week or a month or a year - and then I'll sit down again and write a 30,000 word story in two days. When I was young and dumb enough to listen to other writers, I thought the downtime was "writer's block," and I was freaked out by it. It's not. It's fermentation, and it's the way I work. Right now I'm in downtime and am happily obsessed by the other side of the writer's life - marketing and promotion. And I'm catching up on my reading.

When I return to my writing - and I can feel it simmering, but it's not there yet - I'll be finishing up an unnamed fantasy novel. It's about ninety percent done. I have a big battle scene I need to write, and I mangled a major scene near the beginning when I cut some things to tighten it up: so that needs to be fixed. Both are pretty onerous tasks that I'm not looking forward to, but when I get inspired, I know I'll get them done quickly. After that, it will have to sit for a bit before I send it to my first readers for input. But generally, since I edit while I go, my first draft is fairly close to my final draft.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
HA. My work differs from my own work, from story to story. This makes marketing difficult (if you like this one, well, you might not like this one) but at least it keeps me from getting bored.

Why do I write what I do?
Because it more accurately represents my dreams than does real life.

How does my writing process work?
Partially answered above. But on a more specific level, I usually start with a very clear image of a character in a scene (which often comes from a dream). Then I start asking questions about how that person got to be where they are, and what happens afterwards, until the story grows fractally from both sides. For longer pieces I will write the ending fairly early because I have to know where I'm going.

Writing one-and-a-half novels pantser-style (pantser: someone who writes by the seat of their pants, without pre-planning) has turned me firmly into a plotter - no scene-by-scene synopsis for me, mind you, but I want at least a skeleton of a plot that I can add layers on to as I go. I know there are pantsers who turn out well-formed books on a steady schedule, but God, how? When pantsering, I end up writing about four to ten times as much material as I end up using, and that's just a waste of my time. I think as a pantser I used to spend way more time worrying about plotting than I do as a plotter. How ironic!


Thanks for reading! If you choose to continue the chain, here's my bio:

E. M. Epps
E. M. Epps writes science fiction and fantasy. When not writing, she sells other people's books at Pegasus Book Exchange in West Seattle. She hates writing bios about herself.

So far she has three works published: To Hell and Back Again...With a Little White Dog, a humorous novella with influences from Greek mythology; The Portrait of Géraldine Germaine, a feel-good romance novelette about a female author in 1890's Paris (with a touch of magic as well, of course!); and You Made My Heart a Hunter, a fantasy novella with a focus on spirituality, nature, and the conflict between an individual and society's expectations. All three stories are available on Amazon. She is currently at work on a novel.

Amazon http://amazon.com/author/emepps
Website http://www.emepps.com
Personal blog http://blog.emepps.com
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/EMEppsWriter
Goodreads http://bit.ly/emeppsgr


Now passing along the chain to my two writer/blogger friends:

Pam Summa
Pam Summa graduated from Massachusetts College of Art with a BFA in printmaking in 1981. She has been a data entry peon, a waitress, a housepainter, a muralist, and a fake-blood wrangler, among other things. Single parenting convinced her to go after the long-held storytelling dream. She became an editor while working as a "temporary indefinite" at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a writing coach after handing out advice in the Harvard anthropology department.

Her first novel, Groping for Luna, is a comedy of manners about artists and musicians, a story of foolish love, friendship and betrayal, and making art anyway. It was published as an original trade paperback by Mystic River Ink, and is available at Pegasus Book Exchange in West Seattle and from www.pamsumma.com. It is also available on Kindle at Amazon.com. Her second novel, The Night Trippers, a sequel to Groping for Luna, is available on Kindle.

Check out her blog next week to see how she answered the four writing questions.


Ann Hunter
Ann Hunter wrote her first multi-award winning story before age 13. She is the author of the young adult fantasy novels The Subtle Beauty, Moonlight, Fallen, The Rose In The Briar, and Ashes. She likes cherry soda with chocolate ice cream, is a mom first and a writer second, has a secret identity, and thinks the Twilight movies are cheesier than cheez whiz (which is why they are her guilty pleasure!)

She lives in a cozy Utah home with her two awesome kids and epic husband.

She is the author of The Subtle Beauty & Moonlight, with Fallen expected in May, and The Rose in the Briar in July, and two others by January 2015.

Amazon URL: http://amzn.com/e/B00HNL6K3K
Blog URL: http://annhunter.blogspot.com
Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/authorannhunter
Twitter URL: https://twitter.com/AnnHunter82
Goodreads URL: https://www.goodreads.com/annhunter

She answered the four questions last week on her blog.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

I'm testing out some new blog functionality, so please excuse this pointless post. I will use this opportunity to grab some fill text from Hipster Ipsum, because it cracks me up.

Fixie next level ugh, raw denim VHS stumptown lo-fi American Apparel Blue Bottle salvia fanny pack Tumblr chambray retro. Intelligentsia McSweeney's keffiyeh Carles Tonx, cred biodiesel fixie banh mi disrupt. Pug 8-bit raw denim, Vice selfies scenester church-key. Pickled photo booth organic chia lo-fi. Beard fixie sustainable, pork belly ennui fingerstache hella. Art party hoodie Helvetica Shoreditch typewriter post-ironic. Meh +1 actually try-hard disrupt slow-carb.

I don't even know what 80% of that stuff is. Is that post-ironic?

"Fixing the Little Things" - FREE fantasy story

I was thinking it might be nice to post a free story here, if an idea came to me. An idea did come...at 1:30am. Naturally.

Download a PDF version here.


Fixing the Little Thingsby E. M. Epps

On the way to the supermarket, Chris Begoin turned a corner and found herself on a hill looking down at an encampment of the Roman Imperial Army.
She didn't know at first, of course, that it was Roman, or Imperial. That it was an army was obvious. The rows and rows of leather tents inside a rough wooden wall, the rising plumes of campfire smoke, and the stench of horse manure and latrines made that clear even from a distance.
She squeaked down the frosted-over hill in her tennis shoes, wrapping her arms around herself. In Seattle, it had been May and she was wearing a T-shirt and khaki jacket. Here, it was cold enough to see her breath in the air.
Long before she came within sight of the camp sentries, she made herself invisible. Then, a few strides before she reached the defensive ditch outside the palisade wall, she closed her eyes, and twitched something, just a little, inside her head. When she reopened her eyes, she was inside the camp, in the wide, busy space between the wall and the tents.
The education of Hollywood told her that they were Romans. Chris roamed the broad roads between the blocks of tents, treading softly in case one of the men happened to be able to see her despite her spell. She wasn't sure how a Roman soldier would handle meeting a woman who was not only as tall as or taller than he was, but who also wore trousers and had boy-short hair spiked upright with gel. She would rather avoid finding out, if possible.
After a few minutes, she sat beside a fire between a beautiful, hawk-faced African in a wolfskin coat and a heavyset Mediterranean who looked like he would have been surly if he hadn't been busy being bored. Chris held herself as still as a stone and eavesdropped. She didn't have the gift of tongues, and her Latin extended no further than caveat emptor. But she she could guess well enough the meanings of Germania, barbari, defendimus, Imperium.
There was no point in wishing that her phone worked so she could look up "List of Roman Military Campaigns in Germany" on Wikipedia, and try to guess where and when they were. And that assumed this was even her universe, with her history, and her Romans. It balanced under her feet the same: but if the difference had not yet happened, she might not be able to tell.
Worldwalkers learn to accept very early in their careers that they will usually not understand what is going on, until the Universe is damn well good and ready to tell them.
Resigned, she scooted backwards out from between the two soldiers.
Chris wandered through the camp, hugging herself and rubbing her arms through her thin jacket. She could do a spell to stay warm, but she kept thinking of the rule: in any random group of a hundred, one will be able to see you. The odds increased drastically if she did another spell. So, for now, she shivered, and focused on finding the reason she had been sent here.
She was bemused about why she'd been chosen for this—whatever it was. Her knowledge of Roman history was restricted to what she remembered from school. Which was to say: she was pretty sure there'd been an Emperor named Nero; and Rome had burned during his reign; and he may or may not have been playing the fiddle at the time.
And she didn't do wars, either. Worldwalkers had specialties, generally. The high-powered types dealt with stuff like universes that had suffered nervous breakdowns and needed to be rebooted. Not too many of those. Or you might be the man with a gift for tumbling the plans of evil geniuses. Or curing plagues; or banishing monsters to microverses where they couldn't hurt anybody. Or, maybe, fighting a battle to defend whichever you thought was the right side.
Chris wasn't sure she had a specialty. Everything she was sent to do seemed to be fairly little. Fixing things. Being there at just the right moment to lend a hand: when the car broke down, when the triceratops stumbled through a hole in time, or when the decently-well-behaved demon seduced a not-very-well-behaved suburbanite girl.
She didn't feel shorted by that at all. No magician would ever say that little things didn't count. Big things, after all, are made of little things. Chris was proud of each and every thing she'd done, and wouldn't swap them for the world.
But she did, right now, feel utterly lost. Was she supposed to help these people win their next battle? Or see to it that they lost it? Who was she to judge which was right—and not even ethically speaking, but historically? From Chris's perspective, after all, the battle had already been won or lost thousands of years ago.
Though, of course, she didn't know who had won. So maybe it was a Schrödinger's cat of a battle; in the category of if a battle is won in the past, but the time traveler doesn't know how it ends up, does the tree still fall in the forest?
She realized this was a Great Big Thing She Shouldn't Think Too Hard About. Another skill worldwalkers needed: the intelligent ability to decide not to think about things.
Instead, she looked. Beyond her puffing breaths, she looked, with her eyes and more. She saw: A fraying strap on a bridle. A corn, rubbing the inside of the shoe of a junior officer sitting beside a fire. Fleas and lice, everywhere. A soldier with a burning toothache, miserable inside his tent, on the other side of a leather wall from her.
She stopped. She didn't know what the Universe wanted. But it trusted her; and she trusted it.
She stood close to the wall of the tent and closed her eyes. Even if someone passing by could sense magic a little, he might not notice her if he looked for her. Eyes are drawn to eyes.
Chris's magic did not need incantations or gestures. She just focused for a moment, on a spot outside of herself. Gave a little push, against heat and pain.
The soldier's toothache was gone. Chris tilted her head a little, towards the officer a dozen yards away; and his corn healed, too. And a flick of her attention toward the worn bridle strap.
There was nothing she could do about the fleas—not without doing a spell over the whole camp, which would surely draw attention. She decided to leave it for now.
She went onwards. Fixing things. A weakness in a shield, hidden by its linen and leather covering, which would cause it to shatter at a tap...a tent peg, creeping out of the cold earth. She mended one; stamped the other down.
An alcoholic with a cirrhotic liver, over there. That took a couple of minutes. She huddled by a campfire across from four grubby, slightly drunk men, and tried to block out the sound of their singing as she worked through the spell for one of them, slowly. When that was done she depended on their inattentive state to steal a couple of mouthfuls of their exceedingly nasty wine to warm herself up. Then she went onwards again.
The man would live another dozen years—if he did not die tomorrow with a German arrow through his eye. It was because of that unknowingness that Chris still felt at a loss. She didn't feel that she had done anything wrong, in helping out here and there. But nor did she have that sense within herself that she had accomplished what she had been sent to do. She could leave, she could go home, before she accomplished her purpose. She knew that in the abstract sense; but only in the abstract sense.
It was only because she knew she had the option to leave things undone that she knew she possessed free will. She also knew she would never exercise it.
Another philosophical thing she did not touch.
She'd been here a few hours now. The sun was going down, and Chris was freezing through and through. She crossed a wide road and broke out of the rows of barrack tents into an open space, with one large tent in the center and groupings off to each side. A dignified, olive-skinned man who looked about thirty walked by, heading towards one of the side tents with a purpose. A long scar across one cheek failed to keep him from being handsome.
Chris wanted to be inside more than anything. When the man paused outside the tent to remove his crested helmet and exchange a word with the soldiers guarding the entrance, she drew up close behind him, keeping her eyes down. She did not think twice before ducking through the tent flap after him.
He halted just inside the door. Chris stopped behind him. The man sitting inside the tent looked up from a wax tablet. In the soft lamplight, Chris saw his expression change in a way she couldn't pin down: for as soon as she saw the change begin, she had already responded to it, by freezing and closing her eyes.
Damn, she thought.
She held her breath, and hoped, and hoped, he had sensed her only, rather than seeing her. If he saw her she had no way to explain herself: no way to explain blue jeans and plastic shoes and boy-cropped brown hair, with or without the help of bad high school Spanish.
Keeping her eyes closed for that long moment was a nearly impossible thing. But she was listening, and she heard him shift his weight, but not rise out of his chair. She breathed shallowly through her mouth.
The man she was standing behind asked a question, his voice uncertain. She understood him well enough from his tone: What is it, Legate?
And she also understood the answer, which came too slowly for her taste: Nothing, Centurion.
And then they were off and talking, in that staccato tongue full of the ums and uses that she thought Spanish had been well rid of. She turned her head away so she would not catch the Legate's eyes, and crept sideways out from behind the handsome Centurion. There was a stool beside a brazier near the side of the tent, and she fell onto it gratefully, stretching out her hands to warm them over the coals. They continued talking, paying her no heed. She got up then, as quietly as possible, and went into the part of the tent that seemed to be the living quarters. There, half hidden, she helped herself to a piece of rocky bread and the contents of a cup mostly full of a liquid that actually tasted less bad if she told herself it was vinegar rather than wine.
Then she was glad she had left the stool, for the Centurion had pulled it up near his superior to look over some tablets with him. From their tones, Chris guessed that they knew each other well, though they were suitably professional.
Chris looked around. She had no particular reason or desire to go back outside. She went farther back into the tent, took a fur from the cot, wrapped it around herself, and quietly, very quietly, made herself a comfortable spot on the floor near the brazier. The wine, weak as it was, had gone to her head and the world went pleasantly detached. At first she craned her neck to admire the handsome Centurion. She smiled muzzily to herself. Then she peered at the other, somewhat older man. He was, she decided, interestingly attractive: it was because of his ilk that a certain kind of nose would later be named "Roman."
It was just when she had decided this that he rose suddenly, asking a question about vinum; and went to the other side of the tent to fetch himself and his subordinate some cups thereof. Something had changed when he sat back down. Chris watched the way he offered the cup, the way he picked up his stylus from the low table he had set it on, and then put it back a second later. As if he were ever so slightly nervous. And the Centurion's body language changed too. He shifted in his seat, his fluent speech pausing awkwardly, then jolting onward.
Chris frowned, watching them and trying to figure out what it was. Their topic, as far as she could tell from the mentions of milites, armum that she could catch, had not changed....
It took her a good five minutes before she figured out what it was: then it came to her like a blast.
They were head over heels in love with each other, were completely in the dark about each others' feelings, and were as awkward as crushing fourteen-year-olds about it.
Chris couldn't help it: she giggled.
The Legate's head spun towards her. Chris had time only to think Oh sh— before he had stood, knocking back his chair. Chris floundered in the fur that tangled around her. Then she stopped, because really, she was a magician, damn it.
Now that the Legate was looking right at her, her spell had been broken. The Centurion, too, had leapt to his feet. He drew his short, but very sharp-looking sword, stepping forward to protect his superior.
Chris understood the Legate's sense if not his words:
Who are you? What are you doing here?
The Centurion looked grim and menacing. Safely behind the protection of a spell, Chris sighed and got to her feet. Slowly. Thinking about what she wanted to do. To say.
They probably have a law against it, she thought. And I bet that doesn't stop anybody: it never does.
But if they go on behaving like this, they won't even have a chance to break it. Because neither will ever take the first step.
She drew herself up to her full height, not much shy of theirs. A short bunch, these Romans. She took a deep breath: and committed to her role.
Chris Begoin smiled at the Legate and the Centurion, and raised her hands in a vaguely benedictory motion.
"Soy Venus," she said grandly. "Dios del amor. Amor buena, amigos."
They stared at her.
Chris gestured at the Centurion with one hand, at the Legate with the other. Then, beaming with all the wicked glee of a faux goddess of love, she clasped her two hands together.
"Amor buena," Chris said again; "et buena fortuna."
The Centurion glanced over his shoulder at his Legate. The Legate glanced back at him. Underneath their anger and indigence, they both looked...just a touch embarrassed, was it? They had understood, both of them.
And that was the most, Chris thought, that she could hope for.
She drew another breath. Then she closed her eyes; cast up a sheet of harmless blue fire; and made one deliberate step forward.
The step would have taken her uncomfortably close to the point of the Centurion's sword: if it had not taken her home, instead.
The smell of woodsmoke and latrines vanished in the freshness of recent rain and the weight of car exhaust. Chris felt the unevenness of the cracked sidewalk under her feet, but she kept her eyes closed for a moment. Holding that last image in her mind—of that glance she'd witnessed.
She could see why it had been her, now. She would not have gone inside the tent, if she had not been cold. She would not have seen what was not being said, if she had understood their language. She would not have giggled, if she had not drunk the wine. And she certainly would have over-thought her response to being spotted.
It had, indeed, been a very little thing, she thought. They were probably not anyone important to history. They might die tomorrow—their tomorrow—in battle.
But she hoped that maybe—maybe—they would consider the advice of the ridiculous, slightly tipsy, sneakered goddess of love, first.
She thought they would. Otherwise, what would have been the point?
Just fixing the ­little things. As always.



With thanks to Wallace Breem and Madeline Miller for the inspiration.

If you enjoyed this story, please take one second to share it on your social network of choice using the share buttons below! You may also enjoy my novella, To Hell and Back Again...With a Little White Dog, which is set in a related universe.

Photo "Roman Marbles" remixed from Flickr user Steve Drolet (Tasitch) under Creative Commons license.

"To Hell and Back Again" novella now FREE for a limited time

Just a note to let you know that my fantasy novella, "To Hell and Back Again...With a Little White Dog" is available for FREE on April 2nd and 3rd, 2013 (ending at 11:59am PST on the 3rd). You can grab it on Amazon. And no, you don't need a Kindle to read it.

If you know someone who might want to read it, I believe you can send it as a gift, too. Though don't ask me for technical details on that. :)